Florida House, Senate agree on budget

Tuesday

Apr 27, 2010 at 10:56 AM

Brandon Larrabee/News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE - The House and Senate finalized a $69 billion budget agreement Monday shortly before midnight, sparing most state employees from the budget knife, limiting potential stem-cell research at public universities and eliminating a House provision that would have inadvertently given lawmakers a pay raise.

The agreement capped a long weekend of negotiations that included discussions of everything from the future of the state's Medicaid program to whether universities should be allowed to use public funds to do research involving embryonic stem cells or travel to nations like Cuba.

House lawmakers pushing to expand to the entire state the managed-care pilot program currently used in Northeast Florida and Broward County conceded over the weekend that the plan was dead. Rep. Denise Grimsley, a Lake Placid Republican and the plan's main author, reiterated Monday that she believed no counties would be added to the reform initiative this year.

"Sometimes reform takes years and years," Grimsley said after the meeting at which the handshake deal was reached.

For the fifth straight year state employees will not get a pay raise, though lawmakers did decide to drop a pay cut proposed by the House and a Senate provision that would have required employees to chip into their pension plans for the first time in years.

"My prayers are answered," said Jeanette Wynn, president of the Florida chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Lawmakers froze their own pay, helping fix a drafting error that caused the House to approve a pay increase for legislators even as representatives thought they were voting for a pay cut.

The plan would also require state workers who fall under the "select exempt" classification - largely high-level management and political appointees - to pay $100 a year health care for a single employee and $360 a year for a family plan. Frontline workers already pay significantly more than that, according to the employees federation, which did not take a position on the change.

The Senate also agreed to the House's request for the one-year restrictions on stem-cell research and travel for universities, even as restrictions on stem-cell research at the federal level are being lifted.

"We think it's a very limited restriction and will have, we hope, very limited impact," Alexander said.

As for education, Alexander said per-student spending in the new budget will be "virtually identical to" spending in the financial year that ends June 30. That agreement, struck earlier in the process, essentially split the difference between a House plan to slice per-student spending and a Senate outline that would have boosted it.

Libraries got pretty much all they wanted as the House and Senate negotiated to $21 million.

Negotiators also set aside an extra $40 million for Everglades restoration if additional federal aid on the Medicaid program is passed by Congress, which would bring the total for restoration to $50 million assuming. The Everglades money would draw in about $450 million in federal spending, said Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales.

Lawmakers kicked in another $3 million into the main funding formula for education; per-student spending will rise by 0.6 percent under the final agreement. (About 0.3 percent in Duval County.)

The deal also adds $2 million to the budget for public defenders; Sen. Victor Crist, the Tampa Republican who runs the courts budget committee in the upper chamber, had said cuts to the defenders could raise constitutional issues.

There were also a few local projects sprinkled into the budget, largely for South Florida.

The budget now goes to Gov. Charlie Crist, who still gets to use his line-item veto.

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